So it's been a while...

It has been a very long while. My blog, once thriving, has withered and rotted. But my resolution is to revive this sleeping beast and breath into it new life, with a new persona, a new impetus, a new direction. So, what to talk about.

My Psychology course this year has suddenly become surprisingly and refreshingly interesting. Psychology AS dulled into facts and figures, studies and evaluation, blad de blah. It was memorise and recall for the exam, not stimulating, relatively easy, a nice A for me and my pal UCAS but hardly something that I enjoyed. 

However, this year I've been pleasantly surprised by the philosophical slant that we have been using to study Psychology. The class discussions have become more animated (kind of) because there is more to discuss, more controversial issues, issues worth discussing. 

The most interesting for me so far is the determinism discussion. Is there such thing as freedom and free will? Or is everything determined for us from an early age? Is there a plan set out which everyone more or less must follow, only varying slightly. And if we do vary from the plan, then what? Are we shunned?

In my humble opinion, I'd doubt that there is such a thing as freedom. The discussion we had in class was 'Do you think you made a choice to come to college?'. We put up our hands, there was pretty much an even split, yes, no. The yes-s argued that yes, they made a conscious decision to be there, they wanted the education, they didn't have to go to college, it was their free will that enabled them to go to college and carry on their education. 

A fair point, legally we are not obliged to pursue education post-GCSE. But, why do they want to go college? To get to a good uni. Why? To get a good degree. Why? To get a good job. Why? To get good money. Why? To have a good life. 

And that's where the argument becomes shakey. It's natural to want a good life, there's no free will in that. We flatter ourselves by believing we are far superior to animals, for me, we are hardly better. To quote Hume, 'Reason is slave to the passions'. We have instincts; hunger, thirst, comfort, that must be filled for us to be happy. Now if having a good life means having to have money, then the decision to have money is not a free choice. It's a choice one has to make to have a good life, society puts a price on food and housing, so we must earn money. Suddenly, the argument for free will boils down to nothing; we go to college because we have to. It gives us the greatest chance of a good life.

It's a sad truth for me that determinism prevails, maybe one day I'll abscond to the Canadian mountains in some house made of wood I chopped myself and live on my own food and fuel. But as long as you live with other people, your future is determined. Your class, your gender, your race, hundreds of factors determine which path you take and anyone who steps out of those paths? Well they're just mental aren't they...

Oh, and Batch wanted a mention. So... there we go Batch. Lad.